The Authenticity Complex

There’s too much to reply to in AKMA’s, Tom’s, and Dave’s blogthreading about authenticity. I feel like we’ve developed the topic well enough that blogging is no longer the right instrument of conversation. We should move this to a discussion board where the topics are more fragmented (shorter posts, faster replies) or even to a chat room. Nevertheless…

AKMA is right to remind us that selves are much more complex than my “inner self/outer self” explanation of sincerity and authenticity implies. In fact, “authenticity” impies a much more complex relationship whereby what is public is either “owned up to” or not … in an infinite variety of ways. Most of our great literary characters, from Hamlet to Madame Bovary to Zuckerman, are great because the complexity of the relation of who they are, who they seem and who they own up to being. (That this starts with Shakespeare lends credence to Bloom’s seemingly ridiculous claim that Shakespeare invented what we think of as a person.) This fact makes it much, much harder to think about what authenticity is.

AKMA’s main point in that particular blog entry, however, is that our Web personae are not extrinsic to our real selves. I wholeheartedly agree. That’s why our Web personae are interesting and important to us. That’s why we’re writing ourselves into existence on the Web. In fact, in a single blog I managed to say both that “As I understand the term, ‘authenticity’ assumes that there is a public outer self and an inner private self and that the two are intimately related” and “If your outer self doesn’t pretend to represent your inner self, you’re now in a politics of theatre or authorship, not one of personal identity.” (Emphasis added.) I meant the first to say exactly what AKMA says better: we are our public selves. The second overstates what I meant, for it implies there’s no relation between public and private selves. AKMA admirably spells out the complexity of that relationship. The point I was trying to make was that the relation of Web self to “real” self is different than, and looser than, the relation of RW public self and RW private self. It’d be useful to explore that relationship. Maybe it’ll take a Tolstoy or a Flaubert to do it successfully.

So, I like AKMA’s suggestion that “while ‘authenticity’ may be elusive as a positive quality, ‘inauthenticity’ may be easier to get hold of.” (I also like Dave’s idea that could reel in this discussion by talking about what it actually means for business.) John Austin, the British philosopher, once warned us not to be fooled by the existence of a word into assuming that it must denote some existing thing. For example, I may use the word “real” to distinguish a real gun from a toy gun, real money from counterfeit, real feelings from feigned feelings, real juice from reconstituted juice, etc. It would be a mistake, suggests Austin, to assume that there must be a thing called “reality.” Rather, the word “real” perhaps only has a use like the word “very.” Likewise, the word “authentic” when applied to people (as opposed to Louis XIV furniture) perhaps should be understood as meaning “not inauthentic.” (Well, I guess that wasn’t exactly Austin’s point, but I like Austin’s point so much I’m going to leave it here anyway. So there!) Perhaps “authentic” means nothing more than “Not a phony, not an ass-kisser, not a lying sack o’ shit.”

We got started on this because I blogged about whether the Corporate Voice could ever actually be authentic. (Actually, as I reread my post, I don’t use the term “authentic.” Dave Rogers introduces the term. So blame him! :) And I still think that neither “authentic” nor “inauthentic” can apply to an entity with neither body nor soul … nor, as RB always reminds us, sex organs.

(And I haven’t even replied to extraordinarily rich blog entries from Dave and Tom!)

Here’s a blogthread, not quite up to date, of the story so far.

Categories: Uncategorized dw